


Hollow Victories

by Atta_Girl



Category: Red vs. Blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:08:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25211401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atta_Girl/pseuds/Atta_Girl
Summary: Tucker deals with the aftermath of Churchs' sacrifice.
Kudos: 10





	Hollow Victories

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a quick little drabble I wrote a few years back. Thought I'd share it.

Church said they had won, Tucker didn't remember victory feeling so hollow. He thought about a last minute touchdown, that felt like a lifetime away. The whole team had swarmed him, the cheers of the crowd seemed deafening. He had a different definition for deafening now, a definition that included things like grenades and large-calibre cannon fire.

Celebration this time around had been circumvented when he tore his helmet off and threw it across the room. He'd been sobbing and repeating the words, 'He's gone, he's just gone.' No one had understood until he queued the recording broadcasting Church's voice across radio so Carolina and Wash could hear too.

It had served to confirm what Tucker had felt and known almost instinctively, despite limited hands-on experience with AI technology. In the split second before the battle started he had felt something shift in the back of his head and then Church was gone. 

Tucker hadn't understood what it took to run the advanced systems in the Meta's suit. Months later he was still kept up at night with thoughts of what if. What if he had known Church would have to sacrifice himself and refused to wear it? Church had run the numbers and believed they would die. What if he was wrong? Could an A.I. like Church be wrong about something like that?

Tucker only dimly remembered handing the individual recordings off to Wash sometime after F.I.L.L.I.S. touched Hargrove's ship down on Choros. He had left the Freelancer to pass them out to the others and gone off to find an empty room. He'd wanted, needed, desperately to be out of the suit, for the first time in his life he felt claustrophobic.


End file.
